: My guest this morning is the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. Prime Minister, welcome back to Radio National Breakfast.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning, Sally.
SARA: Ahead of the election, Prime Minister, is this going to be a no frills Budget or is this going to be a Budget that focuses on providing Australians with much needed cost of living relief?
PRIME MINISTER: This will be a Budget that builds on the foundations that we've laid over the last three years. Building a stronger economy, reinforcing the need for stronger Medicare, helping Australians with cost of living pressures while Building Australia's Future.
SARA: You've delivered two surpluses but now have seemingly a decade of deficits on the way. The Treasurer says it remains to be seen when Labor would bring the Budget back into balance. Why isn't there a target that you're working towards?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, what we won't be doing is doing what the Coalition did, which was to produce 'back in black' mugs. And they treated Australians like mugs. They never produced a surplus in their decade in office. What we've done is produce two Budget surpluses. We have cut our debt by $200 billion as a result of our responsible economic management.
SARA: Prime Minister, on cost of living relief, what was the Government's thinking? Why are power bill rebates, why are they not means tested? Why didn't you make them more targeted?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, you can have two options because of the way that the rebates work. You can either just give them to people who are welfare recipients or you can give them to all Australians. What we want to make sure is that we delivered them to working Australians who struggling because of cost of living pressures. And so it is far more efficient to deliver in the way that we have to make sure that every Australian household receives this support, because that is what is deserved.
SARA: It means though, that extra money will be going to some people who don't need it. Is that an example of what the Coalition might call wasteful spending?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, they regard all of it as wasteful spending. All of our cost of living relief. That's what they themselves have said. That's what they regard our investments in Medicare, our tax cuts for every taxpayer. You remember, Sally, that this time last year they were saying that there should be an election to stop tax cuts going through. They regard Free TAFE as not being valued because it's free. Insulting the 600,000 Australians who've enjoyed Free TAFE. They regard Cheaper Child Care as wasteful, even though it's benefited families to the tune of $2,700. That is the point of this contrast that we will see during the election campaign. A Labor Government that has been providing cost of living relief whilst Building Australia's Future and a Coalition just determined to cut and to tell people after the election what they'll cut. But Peter Dutton last week said that if you want to look at what people will do, have a look at their record. And we know that the last time the Coalition came to office, the first thing they did was rip $30 billion out of education and $50 billion out of public hospitals. Now we have an opposite view. We've been providing increased investment for our hospital system, $1.7 billion in the coming financial year alone. We've built 87 Urgent Care Clinics. We are providing Cheaper Medicines and in the Budget, we'll provide for even cheaper, down to $25, the same price they were in 2004. As well as, of course, yesterday's historic announcement of completion now of agreements with all eight states and territories on finally achieving proper funding for every child who goes to a local school, whether it be public or private. This is a historic breakthrough and I thank Premier Crisafulli for signing up to the agreement yesterday.
SARA: Prime Minister, to be fair, the Coalition has matched a number of Labor policies in recent weeks, including matching health policies. Are you planning to match the Coalition when it comes to their gas reservation policy to try and secure more gas supplies, particularly for the east coast of the country?
PRIME MINISTER: They can't be taken seriously, Sally. We introduced gas and coal caps that included reservations for gas and they opposed it. They opposed it like they opposed Energy Bill Relief. People will remember, people aren't goldfish, they'll remember this Coalition Government speaking about a gas led recovery. They said that in the middle of their term they had years to do something and did absolutely nothing. All that happened during their period, was because of their climate denial, there wasn't investment in new energy that was required. My Government has a Future Gas Strategy. We acknowledge that gas has an important role in the future, including on providing firming capacity for renewables along with storage. And my Government has been getting on with that job.
SARA: Prime Minister, there has been pressure from the United States on another a number of allied nations to increase spending on defence. The former Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral Chris Barrie, is critical of Labor's plans to bring forward $1 billion in defence spending. Let's take a listen.
ADMIRAL CHRIS BARRIE, FORMER CHIEF OF THE DEFENCE FORCE: I argue it's lazy in this sense. Everybody talks about how much GDP gets spent on defence. But I'd frankly like to see a new mantra now is, what do we want to be able to do? What do we need to do to equip ourselves and when do we need to get it by? And that should drive the defence Budget.
SARA: Do you agree with his characterisation that that is a lazy approach rather than an overhaul in thinking about what we're capable of?
PRIME MINISTER: It's precisely what we're doing, Sally. When we came to office we inherited a defence system that seemed to regard that you could defend a country with a press release. Because there were press releases and not much actual delivery. And that's why we did a Defence Strategic Review to identify what we needed going forward. And that's precisely what we've been rolling out. That does include additional investment, an additional $10.6 billion over the forward estimates to acquire new capabilities. And that's precisely what we are doing. Under the former Government they had media releases and nothing happened.
SARA: Well, the former government secured the AUKUS deal. And under Labor, we know that -
PRIME MINISTER: Again a media release. There wasn't details for the AUKUS deal. It's taken my Government, in the discussions, negotiations that we have with the US Administration and the United Kingdom to turn what is a good idea into a reality. And that is precisely what we have done since we came to office.
SARA: To be fair, Prime Minister, it was an initiative put forward by the Coalition. And we also know under the Labor Government that the number of people serving in the ADF has declined and a number of operations, we know that some of our ships have been unable to operate due to lack of staffing and so on. Should Labor have done more strategically?
PRIME MINISTER: The naval fleet that we inherited was the smallest that it had been for many, many decades. You can't come to office in 2022 and launch a ship in 2025. The truth is, it takes more time than that. What we are doing is investing. Producing real change and producing real assets, as well as investing in our relationships in the region.
SARA: On a separate issue, you're planning to legislate to protect the Tasmanian salmon industry. What's the point of having environment protection laws if the Government is carving out industries that don't meet the law's requirements?
PRIME MINISTER: The environment protection laws, which we inherited from John Howard, they're not fit for purpose. We need to make sure that we have a proper federal environmental protection authority. We need to make sure that we ensure that industry can function, but also that sustainability occurs.
SARA: The Government's had three years, Prime Minister, to make that happen.
PRIME MINISTER: That's right. And we've got 25 votes in the Senate, Sally. And 25 out of 76 doesn't give you a majority. Legislation passed the House at any time. It could have passed the Senate over the ensuing period.
SARA: This is the second time in a few months that, as Prime Minister, you've overruled the Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, that's just not true. That's just not true. That's a characteristic which is completely not true.
SARA: How do you defend those decisions, though? You've jumped in on those particular areas to take charge. Correct?
PRIME MINISTER: No. We did not have a majority for the Senate for the environmental legislation that we put forward. It's been in the Senate since the middle of last year. At any time a majority could have emerged to support that legislation, it simply wasn't there.
SARA: So, it was your decision to walk away from that or Tanya Plibersek's decision?
PRIME MINISTER: No, it's the numbers. It's called having a majority in the Senate, which we did not have.
SARA: When you were Opposition Leader, you talked about a two term strategy saying that you needed two terms to get things done. Should voters expect if they re-elect you, that you will be bolder a second time around?
PRIME MINISTER: What we've done is lay foundations. We inherited a mess. We inherited a $78 billion deficit in our first year that we turned into a $22 billion surplus. We inherited an aged care system that was in crisis. We've had the most important reforms passed the Parliament this century. We inherited a child care system that wasn't going to have enough workforce to look after our young Australians. We inherited a health system where bulk billing was in free fall. We're turning that around with our investment into Medicare and with our Urgent Care Clinics, taking pressure off the emergency departments of hospitals. We inherited an education system that simply wasn't funding public schools, in particular, with proper funding. We've turned that around with the agreement that we've struck with state and territory governments. We inherited domestic violence issues that simply weren't properly funded. We've turned that around with action with states and territories. There's much more to do there. We inherited a government, from a government that regarded women's issues and gender issues as being something that was thought of as an afterthought. We've entrenched the reforms that were recommended by the Jenkins Review, all 55 of them. We have the gender pay gap at record lows. We have 54 per cent of my Caucus and Government Caucus being women. We have the largest ever women's reproductive health policy, more than half a billion dollars. These are things that we have done in our first term as well as making sure that now, unlike what happened when we came to government, inflation was 6 per cent and rising is now 2.4 and falling. The interest rates started to rise before we came into office. Now they've started to fall. Real wages are increasing. They were falling when we came to office. Tax cuts were aimed just at the high end. We turned that around and gave tax cuts to every Australian. These are all measures we've put in place in our first term. They provide a foundation for our positive agenda in our second term. And we've been out there outlining that agenda, making Free TAFE permanent, the strengthening of Medicare, the changes to education, all of these measures that we've put out there for our second term. And you're right that for many of those, the Coalition have said, 'yeah, me too,' because they haven't done the hard work. They haven't got any policies of their own. They don't have an alternative. All they have is a $600 billion nuclear plan, $20,000 for free lunches that all of your listeners will pay for, and $350 billion of additional cuts that they won't tell you what they are until after the election.
SARA: Prime Minister, we'll need to leave it there. Thank you for your time this morning on Breakfast.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much, Sally.
